Why would you want Test Points? Well, because during the test period on Tribble, we are going to be releasing some new starships and other goodies on the C-Store. In order to try them out, you'll need to buy them with your Test Points.

Until today the process was:

Put new items on tribble

Have people test them

Ignore feedback

I hadn't even considered that you might be able to make your testing process worse. Well, congratulations for surprising me again. The new process is:

Put new items on tribble

Make people pay to test them

Ignore feedback

The more you try to mindlessly wring profits, the more you hurt the game. And eventually that will hurt Cryptic, if it hasn't already. I guess we'll see when Neverwinter comes out how much negative mind-share you guys have amassed.

In the future, after F2P is live, will we once again be able to test new ships for free, or are we going to have to pay for new C-store credits to get the 'test' credits to try new ships?

once again...the question is not for now, but.... After F2P is live.

In other-words...

Will paying money to Cryptic for the privilege of finding and reporting the bugs in their new stuff be the norm once F2P is live?

You're not paying them to test. You're paying them for their currency to use on Holodeck, which also grants you a limited form of test currency so they can figure out good pricing on items, and what items to actually put up.

I am sure that some of you are probably balking at the second way to get Test Points. The reason we are making this an option is because we want to find out what C-Store items you value most and we cannot get that information by giving out free and unlimited Test Points.

Unlimited? No. Free? Yes. Even if you give people free points, as long as they are limited then what they actually spend them on will show you what they value. I'm sorry but that explanation doesnt really make sense, and it just sounds like a wacky way to get people to spend money testing.